The principal theory upon which the study is constructed is an African gendered13 ecological hermeneutics. This theoretical framework draws on postcolonial feminist hermeneutics, eco- feminism and African feminist cultural hermeneutics.
The study is premised on the assumption that women are more severely affected than men by the impact of the ecological crisis. Empirical research has shown that women are more affected by all forms of environmental degradation including climate change than men due to their social roles as carers and their social location as the poorest and most vulnerable at the bottom of the social hierarchy, alongside children (IPCC 2007). African women theologians correctly argue that African women are more affected by religio-cultural and socio-political evils than men (Kanyoro 2002:18). To demonstrate this, African women theologians have developed an African feminist cultural hermeneutics as a tool for reading the biblical text.
African feminist cultural hermeneutics analyses cultural issues in the biblical text with a view to discarding elements that are not life-giving while upholding those that are life-giving to women (Kanyoro 2002:18,61). I will, on the basis of this theory, scrutinise resources from indigenous Tonga culture. The bible is a product of the colonial history of Africa. At the same time, indigenous African culture as it exists today, has been partially conditioned by the process of colonisation (Sugirtharajah 2001:126,249)14. Thus, both the bible and African culture have to be scrutinised. While African cultural hermeneutics exposes how the bible has been used to justify
13This study does not assume that men are not affected by the ecological crisis but that women are more severely affected. A gendered theory looks at the power relations between men and women.
14 Some scholars have contested the postcolonial theory due to its failure to encourage the formerly colonised communities to take responsibility for their social, economic, religious and political development. After political independence from European imperialism, many Africans states have failed to manage their affairs properly. See Tengatenga (2010, 2006), Blaikie (2004).
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patriarchy in African culture, thereby contributing to the oppression of women, it does not seriously engage with the link between the oppression of women and the misuse of nonhuman nature due to western imperialism. And so, to analyse how western imperialism and Christianity contributed to the disempowerment of African women, some biblical scholars have proposed postcolonial feminist hermeneutics (Dube 2000, 2001).
Postcolonial feminist hermeneutics begins with the experience of women and reads the bible for the purpose of decolonisation (Dube 2001:180). It contends that Christianity and patriarchal colonial ideologies were interwoven and have led to the oppression of women (Dube 2000:15, 16; Sugirtharajah 2001:249, Gandhi 1998). The theory is employed by biblical scholars as a tool for reading the biblical text “in an attempt to find political, cultural, economic and religious colonial intentions that informed and influenced the writer’s context” (cf. Rukundwa 2008:339).
As Sugirtharajah (1998:19-20) and Tamez (1996:203-205) have rightly observed, the bible is a colonial text in character and ideologies.
While postcolonial feminist hermeneutics was sufficient to explore the role of the bible in justifying imperialism and the oppression of women, the hermeneutical theory fell short when it came to engaging with the role of the bible in justifying imperialistic patriarchal ideologies that have contributed to the marginalisation of nonhuman nature. Hence this thesis proposes to extend this hermeneutical theory.
Building on the premise of ecofeminism which holds that the oppression of women and the natural world are deeply interwoven (Clifford 2005:224) but focusing on the African context, I propose an African gendered ecological hermeneutics as a heuristic key in this thesis. An African gendered ecological hermeneutics puts the biblical text to the test by paying particular attention to the oppression of African women and the natural world. Upholding the feminist hermeneutics of suspicion (Fiorenza 1992:53), it begins with the experience of oppression by African women which is interwoven with the marginalisation of the natural world. The task of African gendered ecological hermeneutics therefore includes retrieving the ecological wisdom from both the biblical text and indigenous African culture. By retrieving and analysing gendered and ecological values from the biblical text and the Tonga indigenous African culture, the study exposes how
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the patriarchal writers and redactors of the bible have underplayed the plight of women and ecological concerns in the biblical creation myths that are depicted in Genesis 1-3.
The theoretical framework enabled me to read and analyze the biblical text (Genesis 1-3) from an African gendered ecological perspective that affirms that the earth and all its creatures (human and non-human) are interdependent and intimately interwoven (Masenya 2010:57, Conradie 2010:295).
Carney (1975:8) defines a theory as “a basic proposition through which a variety of observations or alternative statements become explicable”. If we follow this trajectory, then a theory is a set of statements or principles developed and repeatedly tested to explain a group of facts or phenomena. Models on the other hand are used to articulate theories and test their validity (Elliot 1993:44). It follows therefore that a model can be defined as a link between theories and observation (Carney 1975:8).
In the social sciences, theology and biblical studies, sectarian models are employed in considering such features as communal identity, cohesion and ideological commitment. Elliott (1993:34-59) demonstrates the usefulness of sectarian models to explain tension based on a binary concept. Such models are also used to explain tension that results from cultural or identity differences such as occur between insiders and outsiders, colonisers and colonised, male and female, and male elite and nonhuman forms of life. In other words, a theory serves as a foundation on which models are built in order to produce a working methodology for a particular study.
It is worth noting that in the social sciences a method of analysis may include both “emic” and
“etic” concepts. These are used as the means of analysis, distinguishing and clarifying the differences between the social location of the interpreter and the social location of the authors and the objects to be interpreted. West (2008:3) refers to this as the ideo-theological orientation.
The social location of the interpreter includes gender, ethnicity, cultural values, religio-politics and socio-economic issues in time and space. In research “emic” identifies the information as narrated and perceived by the indigenes while “etic” identifies the perspective of the external investigator (Elliot 1993:38).
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In investigating the research problem the theoretical framework and the methodology informed each other. It is therefore important to outline the methodology of the study.